Beyond boundaries: new perspectives on Italian communist historiography

In 1989, the Italian Communist Party (PCI) was going through a period of transition. The fall of the Berlin Wall posed an enormous challenge to Marxist beliefs and the communist political project. In this situation, party secretary Achille Occhetto and his close collaborators planned to embark on a new social-democratic path, as a significant part of the elderly leaders and rank-and-file members feared the abandonment of communist ideals. ‘We are a different party … and I continue to believe it,’ a Milanese communist militant shouted while Nanni Moretti was shooting La Cosa (1990), a documentary about the last days of the PCI, crystallising the perceived sense of uniqueness and diversity that pervaded Italian communism despite the complete loss of meaning for the communist movement worldwide.